Review: Jane's Addiction freshens up its oldies on Gas Monkey stage

By Darryl Smyers, Special Contributor

Jane's Addiction's 56-year-old frontman Perry Farrell was looking good Friday night on the Gas Monkey Live! stage. The serpentine vocalist for the iconic alt-rock band displayed the signature moves that made him all the rage back in the day.

Fit and impeccably dressed, Farrell led the band through a song-by-song re-creation of Jane's Addiction's 1990 opus Ritual de lo Habitual. Hailed by fans as the band's defining release, Ritual is, in all honesty, a hit-or-miss proposition. The album's catchiest tune is "Been Caught Stealing," a rather pedestrian take on the punk-funk sound better done by the likes of Living Colour, among others.

With so many bands doing these tours showcasing one particular album, it's becoming more difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. Ritual de lo Habitual is no Who's Next or Never Mind the Bollocks or Physical Graffiti.

Kind of like Korn who performed its debut album here a few weeks ago, Jane's Addiction's rendering of its big album at first felt rote, a bit like a party in honor of something that didn't warrant such reverence.

But on Friday, Farrell and guitarist Dave Navarro (also looking particularly buff) injected each song with a dynamic that was missing on the original album. Songs like "No One's Leaving," "Obvious" and "Then She Did" were played with passion and power to spare. The extended jam on "Three Days" took the song to a place where Led Zeppelin and Joe Satriani blissfully coexist, a place miles beyond what was done in 1990.

The Zeppelin connection cannot be overstated as Farrell and Navarro channeled Robert Plant and Jimmy Page all evening. Farrell never had Plant's vocal range, but he's got the stage dynamics down pat. And Navarro's lead work was clean and crisp from start to finish. Towards the end of the night, when Jane's Addiction launched into "Ocean Size" (from 1988's Nothing's Shocking), Navarro was as vital a component as Farrell.

Navarro's playing on the Middle-Eastern-influenced "Of Course" was also a surprise as the band locked into a groove that inspired the sold-out throng to embrace a pace beautifully out of Jane's Addiction's obvious comfort zone.

Toying with scantily clad backup dancers that evoked the local strip clubs not so far from the venue, Farrell pranced the stage with the vigor of prime Mick Jagger. With his satin shirt tied off at his belly button, Farrell was nothing but style personified. Indeed, the entire vibe of the show was akin to the Rolling Stones circa 1980 when the album Emotional Rescue represented that band's last gasp of relevance.

Like the Stones, who knows when Jane's Addiction will make another album that makes a difference? Better yet, who cares? Bands who had their heyday in the '80s and '90s can continue to rework their back catalog while pleasing fans who expect to relive memories from exactly that same time.

Darryl Smyers is a Dallas freelance writer.